Verizon Announces Purchase of Intel Media Group

So, 3 months ago, it was discovered via rumors that Intel was shopping around their Media Group division which was supposed to revolutionize the way that we interface with TV. Those late-October rumors turned out to be true today with the announcement of Verizon’s acquisition of Intel’s Media Group division. Although, the problem with today’s announcement is that neither Intel nor Verizon are disclosing exactly how much was paid for the division or ANY of the terms of the agreement. Clearly, both companies are asking for their investors to hound them about more details regarding this transaction.

All that we know now is that Verizon is going to acquire the OnCue Cloud TV technology, all 350 employees and will continue to operate the division within Santa Clara, leaving virtually all of the employees with their jobs if they so choose to stay. This is definitely a good thing for all of the employees when you consider that usually such acquisitions generally result in the sacking of many of the division’s employees for the sake of redundancy.

The transaction is expected to clear regulatory approvals and complete in the 1st quarter of 2014, meaning that many of the details have already been ironed out and that this has in fact been in the works for many months. What will be interesting will be to see how Verizon will utilize this in places where they do not have a wired connection to the premises but they do have a wireless one with a 4G LTE connection. It will be interesting to see if and how they will start to deliver content to people’s homes using 4G LTE in order to broaden their customer base outside of the geographical areas where they have a local monopoly. This could bode well for Verizon’s growth opportunities and takes a black mark off of Intel’s back, so that they can focus on growth opportunities (which this was supposed to be).